What is Christianity? Is it a collection of doctrines concerning God? A moral code? A worldwide religious and political presence and power? A sociological or religious-anthropological phenomenon? What is it, essentially? A belief system, a way of life? There is some truth in all of the above, but the heart of the matter is so profound as to be simple, and perhaps for that reason insufficient attention is paid to it—to the great detriment of Christians and of Christianity as such. I think we can come very close to the essence of Christianity by opening up chapter four of the First Epistle of St John.
For the purpose of this reflection I will pass over the first six verses and leave them to those who wish to discuss discernment of spirits and the meaning of “antichrist.” Beginning with verse seven, we can see that it’s true, though perhaps a little too facile, to say that the heart of Christianity is love, for that can be vague and even close to meaningless, what with the terrible overuse and misuse of the word today. For all the richness of English vocabulary, it becomes poor when called upon to help us speak of love.
To spare you a long introduction, I will state immediately that one way of expressing the essence of Christianity is: God abiding in us and we in God, through the Spirit of Jesus Christ, whom God sent into the world, that we might live through Him (see 1John 4:9, 13). The “unpacking” of that statement can be found in the millions of volumes writte
n about the Mystery of Christ over the past two millennia. I only have a short space here to reflect upon it, so it will necessarily be but a brief glimpse of the blinding glory of this truth.
“God is love” is probably the most profound revelation to be found in the Holy Scriptures. To believe that God is love is to believe much more than the fact that God loves us. For we learn here that Love is who God is; Love is the nature of God. That is why the revelation of God as Trinity is essential to understanding God as love. To say “God is love,” rather than merely “God loves us,” is to say that “who God is” is the communion of love of three Divine Persons sharing one nature. God is God only because the Father, Son and Holy Spirit eternally give all they are to each other (and hence eternally receive from each other) in an unceasing and unfathomable exchange of love. I think that we can only be absolutely sure that God loves us when we believe that God’s very being is Love and hence can only relate to us out of love. “So we know and believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1John 4:16). Believing in God’s love is an act of faith; the “knowing” comes from the experience of mutual abiding. More will be said about that below.
It might be useful to look at the emphasis we ought to place when saying that God is love. We should say “God is love” rather than “God is love.” The distinction is not as hair-splitting as it might seem at first. To make the latter emphasis is to imply that whatever we know of love or think love is, or whatever feels like love, well, that is God. Obviously this approach can be susceptible to monstrous errors. But to say that God is love is to say that what has been revealed about God, who God is and how God acts toward us, that is what love is. So when we are able to love as Jesus, God incarnate, loves—as He has called us to do—then we know that we are abiding in love and hence abiding in God.
How has this divine love been manifested to us? St John writes: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1John 4:9). If we try to imagine God sending his Son into the world (which we probably shouldn’t), we may end up with some sort of strange picture of the Father staying at home in Heaven while Jesus travels down to Earth. Scripture says that the love of God, that is, who God is, the very being of God, was manifested among us, not merely expressed by some benevolent act on our behalf. The Father Himself was revealed by—not merely spoken about, but manifested in—Jesus Christ: “Who sees me sees the Father” (John 14:9). Sometimes it is a little too easy to think of God as three Gods: the Father God, the Jesus God, and the Spirit God. But it is an unchangeable article of our faith that there is only one God, revealed to us as tri-personal.
When we see in verse ten of 1 John 4 that God sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins, again we should not imagine the Father looking down from heaven upon his suffering Son. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself” (2Corinthians 5:19). We see the unfathomable and boundless love of God manifested in the crucified Christ who, as man, loved us to the end, beyond even the utmost limits of love. A bloody sacrifice was not needed to appease the wrath of God, as if God were no better than some bloodthirsty pagan deity. No, the total self-emptying, self-sacrificing love of Christ on the Cross powerfully expressed the compassionate love of God for the world, and in this love is the forgiveness of all sin.
After opening up the mystery of God’s astonishing love, St John adds, very simply, but with worldwide reverberations: “If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1John 4:11). Now how can we possibly love like that? We are not Love by nature, as God is. In fact, we’re burdened with selfishness and many defects, and we’re always prone to sin. Yet Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). There’s only one way that this can be possible. God has to live in us, and we in God.
To be continued…
